“During the rock era, the bootlegging craze was put into motion by Great White Wonder, the unauthorized Dylan vinyl released by two devotees in 1969. But classical music, long its own ground for renegade recordings, is where the practice got its wings.”

Robert Everett-Green points out that allegations of Dutoit’s bullying of musicians in rehearsal – allegations repeated in detail last week in two of Montreal’s francophone newspapers – were made very clear by the players in 2002. And when they were, Dutoit abruptly stormed away from his job, and the orchestra’s management was far more concerned with his feelings than those of the musicians. “It’s worth looking at the circumstances that may have led [the board] to brush off the players’ complaints for about 20 years.”

“Paata Burchuladze, a prominent opera singer who challenged Georgia’s ruling coalition in 2016 parliamentary elections, has been questioned by prosecutors [in Tbilisi] investigating allegations of embezzlement and misuse of funds by his charitable foundation.”

“Omarosa Manigault Newman, a three-time contestant on NBC’s The Apprentice, volunteered to enter a surreal house in which minor celebrities, acting out under constant media surveillance, conspire to eject their rivals one by one.
Then she went on Celebrity Big Brother. That it took the second experience (a CBS reality show) to get Ms. Newman to open up about the first (her tenure in Donald J. Trump’s White House) may not be the model of civic discourse that the founders envisioned. But it’s the one Americans voted for, and maybe the one we deserve.” (includes video)

London’s Royal Academy of Music was bottom of the list – less than half (44%) of pupils starting its undergraduate courses last year were from state schools. The third-least accessible body was the Courtauld Institute of Art, also based in London, where 55% of new students were from state schools. By comparison, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge accepted 58% and 63% of students from state schools respectively in 2016/17. According to research by the Independent Schools Council for 2016/17, just 7% of UK children go to independent schools at any one time.

Basically, this is in response to a popular creator named Logan Paul, who violated the company’s policies several times (and posted videos about the abuse of dead animals). “The changes are straightforward: YouTube says it reserves the right to strip a channel of its ability to serve ads and its access to premium monetization programs like Google Preferred and its YouTube Partner Program, as well as the right to cease recommending a channel’s videos across its network, if that channel proves harmful to the broader YouTube community.”

Maybe fashion videos pay more than dance? In the video (which replaced the traditional runway show), you’ll see “eight members of American Ballet Theatre, three Hiplet dancers, three members of Bullettrun Parkour and YouTube dance star Kandi Reign.”

Hint: We’re talking about The Shape of Water, which won best movie at the Producers Guild this weekend, while its director, Guillermo del Toro, snagged the feature film award at the Directors Guild. (Note: La La Land won both of those awards last year, and as everyone knows, did not win the Oscar.)

David Simon, writer and creator of The Wire, announced Cathey’s death on social media. “Though he earned credits in dozens of television shows and movies, it was Mr. Cathey’s portrayal of Freddy Hayes — an empathetic, salt-of-the-earth barbecue pit owner whose restaurant provides a respite for Francis Underwood, the scheming politician in House of Cards — that earned him three Emmy nominations and one win for outstanding guest actor in a drama series.”

Says Olly Wainwright: “For sure, it is more dry digestive than gelatinous trifle, but that is generally to be welcomed. It is also refreshing to find a development where as much, if not more, attention has been paid to the streets and spaces as the buildings that frame them. It may be the usual kind of overly managed pseudo-public space, but accusations of privatisation are unfounded, given that most of the site was off-limits to the public before.”

Or are the so-called gangs – groups of families and friends, with vests and patches, who go to Disneyland together – just harmless fun, as they claim? “A lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court has revealed a dark undercurrent to the pastime. The head of one club has accused another of using gangster-like tactics to try to collect ‘protection’ money for a charity fundraiser at the park.”

Why would the politicians who make those decisions think this was a good one? “The council said in a statement that fines can be ‘off-putting for customers,’ and it hopes the change, which will see library fines eliminated across Trafford for all ages from April, will lead to ‘a further increase in usage of libraries across the borough.'”

Will this happen? “To get well beyond the 2 million [subscribers] it already has, MoviePass needs to convince people that they really want to go to movies more often. In most cities, a subscriber needs to watch 13 movies a year to break even. In big cities, it’s eight.”

A new 10-episode dramedy series is just the newest in a lineup of original content with which Facebook is trying to bust in on the Amazon Prime/Netflix/Hulu/HBO Now game (and it’s even got on of the Avengers in it).

Musicologist Douglas Shadle: “Everything she was doing was musically mainstream but at the same time idiosyncratic. … Her music has kind of a luminous quality that strikes me as her own. Our understanding of American modernism of the 1930s and 1940s is not complete without Price’s contribution.”

Choreographer and dancer Alexandra Pirici created her performance piece for the New Museum for five dancers, and a hologram. “‘The biological body wants toilet breaks,’ she said, ‘it gets tired, it decays.’ A hologram, though, makes no demands.”

Poets Denise Newman and Hazel White won a grant to collaborate with the UC Botanical Garden in Berkeley. Then they created a massive collaboration. “Poetry is often so nearly silent, floating on the page, unseen and unheard by the vast majority of people, even those who read. I sense in Newman and White the desire to break down the barriers between poetry and the world, to get out there and chat, even as they undertake brainy inquiries about the nature of beauty and how a seemingly innocent activity, like collecting plants, can conceal human power dynamics.”

The artist made a splash when she was a young painter in San Francisco, but she and her artist husband (James Kelly) left for New York and the Abstract Expressionist life. Using a palette knife instead of a brush, her technique “made Ms. Gechtoff stand out in a genre that was largely male.”

To be clear: The state attorney’s office says that the non-Rockwell pieces up for sale can go anywhere, but the Rockwell must be sold to another museum and remain on public view. “The agreement, which requires court approval, could end a contentious chapter in the history of the museum.”

Robert Meya proposed to the search committee that he be considered as part of a management “troika” that would divide administrative, artistic, and musical responsibilities among three people. This differs fundamentally from the company’s historic model, in which the general director has assumed lead responsibility for all of those areas. The Opera’s board is authorized to appoint only the general director and, as a matter of policy, does not act directly in other staffing decisions. Meya is accordingly being hired as general director with the understanding that his first act of business is to name Toronto’s Canadian Opera Company’s general director Alexander Neef to the newly created position of artistic director and Santa Fe Opera’s chief conductor Harry Bicket to be the company’s music director. The three members of the management team have all been acquainted with each other for years.

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more ... read more

“Men are wicked, and when I die I shall at least have the consolation of knowing that I have never rendered anyone a service.” Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford (quoted in the Goncourt brothers’ ... read more

In Monday’s posting revisiting an early <em>Rifftides</em> piece about Tom Talbert (pictured ca. 1956), the staff was remiss in not including examples of Talbert’s music. Let’s remedy that. From his remarkable Bix ... read more

The thrill is gone. For several of the highest-estimated properties in the recent series of Impressionist, modern and contemporary sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the “auction fever” of yesteryear has given way to single-bid transfers ... read more

The latest episode of Three on the Aisle, the twice-monthly podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or downloading. In this ... read more

A scene from Larry Peerce’s 1969 film version of Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus, starring Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw. The screenplay is by Arnold Schulman: (This is the latest in a series of arts- ... read more

Demands on time and resources have sidetracked plans for a new Monday Recommendation. Hey, stuff happens. The Rifftides staff’s solution is to reach back to the earliest days of this blog, and ... read more

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II appear as the mystery guests on What’s My Line? The host is John Daly and the panelists are Arlene Francis, Fred Allen, Dorothy Kilgallen, and Bennett Cerf. This episode ... read more

Denny Zeitlin, Wishing On The Moon, Live At Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola In New York City Pianist Zeitlin has recorded three albums with bassist Buster Williams and drummer Matt Wilson, beginning in ... read more

Cover and back page of four-page folio being published in a limited edition by Cold Turkey Press.John Bryan published so many underground papers and magazines over three decades — beginning in 1962 with renaissance, a ... read more

I don’t want to say anything bad about the royal wedding, which was lovely and inspiring. Or about Sheku Kanneh-Mason, the cellist who played so gorgeously. But one of the pieces he played was crazily ... read more

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review a Connecticut revival of The Will Rogers Follies. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Will Rogers is mostly forgotten now, but he used to be famous ... read more

William Talman, who played Hamilton Burger on Perry Mason, appears in a 1968 anti-smoking TV public-service announcement, the first one to feature a celebrity. A longtime smoker, Talman died of lung cancer six weeks after ... read more